Pages tagged "economic justice"

With all that is being written in the mainstream press about the 2016 election season, an important aspect of the massive turnout and public support for Bernie Sanders seems to have gone unnoticed. Among the thousands of unionists drawn to the Sanders campaign, there’s new interest in talking about democratic socialism. For some, it’s an exciting new inquiry—what does it mean to be a socialist and a trade unionist? For others, with sad memories of U.S. labor’s cold-war red-baiting, it’s an opening to reexamine our union history and reclaim the broader, transformational agenda that socialists have fought for both in their unions and in society at large.

Municipal sanitation workers went on strike in March 1968 for higher wages, union recognition, and respect for black personhood. Credit: AFSCME

By Thomas F. Jackson

In 1968, a united black community in Memphis stepped forward to support 1,300 municipal sanitation workers as they demanded higher wages, union recognition, and respect for black personhood embodied in the slogan “I Am a Man!” Memphis’s black women organized tenant and welfare unions, discovering pervasive hunger among the city’s poor and black children. They demanded rights to food and medical care from a city and medical establishment blind to their existence.

The campaign of Bernie Sanders for President of the United States of America has surfaced as a critically important issue that has faced progressives in the USA since the 19th century: can the question of economic injustice stand alone as the platform for a progressive movement? In fact, it is the #BlackLivesMatter movement that has elevated this question to a national discussion point.

Statement by the Democratic Socialists of America National Political Committee, August 21, 2014

Democratic Socialists of America calls for a full federal civil rights investigation into the killing of Michael Brown and an end to the militarization of local police forces. The action of the Ferguson, Missouri, police department exemplifies the dangers to the lives of ordinary Americans, particularly people of color, posed by overly aggressive, heavily armed police forces.

Over the past thirty years, federal, state and local government have abandoned commitments to fighting poverty and unemployment, conditions that disproportionately limit the life opportunities of young persons of color. Most low income youth only encounter the state as a repressive force that relegates them to a life within the prison-industrial complex, even for the most minor and non-violent of drug-related offenses. These activities rarely lead white youth to be arrested, let alone imprisoned.

In the case of Ferguson, Missouri, police-mandated media blackouts and the pervasive detainment, harassment and arrest of journalists cloud public understanding of the ongoing crisis. The constant barrage of tear gas canisters into crowds, backyards and neighborhood streets in recent days has further hampered a full understanding of the situation on the ground.

What is clear is that on August 9th, Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson shot and killed an unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown, a young black man.

“A. Phillip Randolph was a socialist. Bayard Rustin was a social democrat. Others who were involved [in the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom] had been socialists or social democrats or radicals or progressives from different groupings, and the fact of the matter is John Kennedy and even Lyndon Johnson accepted them into the White House and said “You’ve got ideas.” . . . Ideas of economic and social justice were once invited into our political discourse. Now, at every turn, they are pushed out. And when a crisis occurs, the social democratic proposal to repair it is the first one taken off the table. . .

In 1968, a united black community in Memphis stepped forward to support 1,300 municipal sanitation workers as they demanded higher wages, union recognition, and respect for black personhood embodied in the slogan “I Am a Man!” Memphis’s black women organized tenant and welfare unions, discovering pervasive hunger among the city’s poor and black children. They demanded rights to food and medical care from a city and medical establishment blind to their existence.

The two great loves of my father’s life were the Green Bay Packers and golf. Every fall Sunday we worshipped at the altar of the Green and Gold. My brother and I learned, at an early age, that we could only talk during commercials and half time. Our Sunday routines created my love of armchair sports. Today, in addition to following pro football, I watch college basketball and football, pro basketball, baseball and tennis. Too often feminists and leftists dismiss the importance of sports in society and only focus on the machismo culture encouraged by professional/college athletics. Although that culture is real to an alarming extent, I dare say it is also an elitist attitude that is not conducive to mass organizing and needs to be re-considered.

Thirty years ago, Douglas Fraser, then president of what was still a million-member United Auto Workers union, presciently warned that the leaders of corporate America—in combination with the American Right—were waging a “one-sided class war.” He described it as “a war against working people, the unemployed, the poor, the minorities, the very young and the very old, and even many in the middle class of our society.” Jump ahead three decades and the results of that war are palpable.

Join Steve Max, a founder of the legendary community organizing school, the Midwest Academy, to practice talking about socialism in plain language. Create your own short rap. Use your personal experience and story to explain democratic socialism. Prepare for those conversations about socialism that happen when you table or canvass. This workshop is for those who have already had an introduction to democratic socialism, whether from DSA's webinar or from other sources. Questions? Contact Theresa Alt <talt@igc.org> 607-280-7649.

DSA was concerned to find out that the company that provides our website and online organizing infrastructure, NationBuilder, had as a client the Trump campaign and other right-wing candidates. Progressives built this kind of infrastructure and tools for digital organizing and we have now lost that organizing edge. We are moving to identify other options for a CMS/CRM. As an under-resourced, member funded organization, this move will take time for us to carry out, but it is an important statement for us to make.